BlackBerry pushed out at AT&T for iPhone?
updated 02:35 pm EDT, Fri August 1, 2008
BBerry Squeezed Out at ATT
Research in Motion and its BlackBerry smartphones on the verge of falling out of favor at AT&T in exchange for the iPhone, says an investment note from Credit Suisse's Kulbinder Garcha. The analyst notes that RIM's share of smartphone sales at AT&T, which have crested at 70 percent in June, are unlikely to remain at such high levels and instead are more likely to drop as AT&T shifts the brunt of its promotion to the iPhone 3G. The touchscreen phone remains a strong seller three weeks after launch and has already seen AT&T agree to heavy subsidies to help push its sales where BlackBerry devices are strictly in line prices at other competitors.
While not committing to a definitive estimate for the scale of the decline, Garcha believes the loss of marketing effort will be tangible enough to ultimately cost RIM its overall influence and hardware sales, even with the expected high-profile launch of the touchscreen BlackBerry Thunder in the fall and a sales boost forecast to give RIM 55 percent of smartphone sales at Verizon.
About 25 to 30 percent of RIM's phone sales hinge on AT&T, the analyst says.
RIM's BlackBerry Bold smartphone has already been touted as a carrier exclusive in the US but caters more to the Canadian firm's traditional office worker audience than the Thunder, which lacks the BlackBerry's signature QWERTY keyboard.
The company is also thought to be a victim both of a limited market and of itself. While growing rapidly, the smartphone industry is said to be growing relatively slowly, expanding by a relatively modest 64 percent in 2009, and will face shrinking profit margins on its devices as it faces price cuts or else rising product costs in order to stay competitive.
and thus spake..
08/01, 03:47pm reply
the marketplace.
msuper69
Mac Elite
Joined: Jan 2000
English 101
08/01, 04:11pm reply
This is possibly the most poorly written article I've read in a very long time. Does anyone, other than the author, read or edit these before publishing them?
Some of these sentence/paragraphs are so poorly constructed it is impossible to determine what the author is saying.
Guest
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Nov 1999
what???
08/01, 04:41pm reply
How useless is this analysis? In June (when, BTW, the iPhone wasn't selling) RIM had a large marketshare. Now, with more and more smartphones being released, esp. cheaper ones geared towards the consumer rather than pro user, it looks like RIM's share might not go higher?
Man, what insight here.
And lest we forget, RIM apparently figured out the complexity of making a phone that runs on competing networks as well, so they have more of a potential market.
testudo
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Aug 2001
FRIM FRAM
08/01, 05:09pm reply
"RIM apparently figured out the complexity of making a phone that runs on competing networks as well..."
If you are implying that Apple couldn't, remember that they first approached Verizon.
SlimGem
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Jul 2008
Rubbish
08/02, 01:17pm reply
Wishful thinking on the part of an Apple biased site. The real money for Blackberry is all the corporate sales via AT&T and Verizon. Staggering numbers even if you only count New York. This is why if RIM's email servers go down it is major news but when Apple's stupid me.com service fails it's a small item next to the cartoons.
Apple is still struggling to get real traction. Indeed they have only increased the sales of Blackberry and Windows mobile devices. Reason, removable battery and a real keyboard.Also they offer phones with no cameras which is mission critical for attorneys or for any corporation that fears theft of copyright material.
The iPhone is a toy compared to the Blackberry. I happen to like toys.
RIM phones run on all networks. The iPhone has one important asset for business the ability out of the box to read and write Chinese, Japanese. Now that's cool. However it is possible for little expense to set up thousands of Blackberry's in an office to do the same.
henjin
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: May 2007
Room for both smartphones
08/02, 01:57pm reply
I hope they can both coexist and continue to grow since I have shares in both. RIM's growth may be slowed a bit by the incursion of the iPhone, but not enough for it to start losing most of its business customers. I have a lot of respect for RIM and they won't go down without a fight regardless of what Apple fans say about RIM being done for already.
I foresee a lot of midrange handset users moving to smartphones which should keep expanding smartphone user base.
Constable Odo
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Joined: Aug 2007